My Australian client Meg was tired of her corporate job and wished she could create a layoff with a generous severance package. So for fun she wrote herself a severance letter offering her desired package, printed it on company stationery, and signed it from the CEO. This was her idea of creating a treasure map toward her ideal scenario.
The next day Meg’s supervisor called her into his office and told her he had some disturbing news. Someone had written Meg a severance letter and signed it as if from the CEO, but the CEO knew nothing about it. The supervisor produced the letter in question - the very document Meg had written herself and printed on the office printer. Apparently she had “accidentally” printed two copies and left one in the office printer.
Two weeks later Meg got a real severance letter from the CEO, with the terms she had written herself. Christmas came early this year.
As children, we all delighted to believe in Santa Claus. What a thrill to sit on his lap, look into his twinkling eyes, and tell him exactly what we wanted, trusting he would deliver! Then some buzzkill elder brother or cynical teacher told us that Santa was just a guy the department store hired to don a white beard and red suit and tell kids what they wanted to hear. End of childhood, beginning of cold hard reality.
Or is it? Santa Claus is not a person, but he is a principle, a dynamic, a universal idea that goes far beyond a person. Santa Claus represents a benevolent universe that knows our needs and can and will deliver our good to us. Just as Jesus is a channel through which the Christ energy flows, and Buddha is the being through which Buddha Mind is expressed, Santa is a cultural form—a local permission slip through which we allow ourselves to receive the blessings we desire and deserve.
There are two ways of asking: asking from need and asking from fulfillment. Hardly anyone asks from fulfillment because we usually indentify with need. “I am lacking. I want this and I don’t have it. I am empty and I need the universe to fill in the blank.” But the results we get depend on how we ask. Meg’s self-created layoff letter is a clever example of asking from fulfillment. She went to the place she wanted to go to even before it showed up. Her sense of having what she wanted was stronger than not having what she wanted. She affirmed the solution rather than the problem.
Many people are familiar with the science fiction theme of parallel realities. But the principle is more science than fiction. There are an infinite number of realities occurring simultaneously. Jesus stated this in the language of his time: “In my Father’s house there are many mansions.” Anything that has existed, will exist, or could exist, already exists. So even while you experience a lack of something in one reality, in another reality that lack has already been fulfilled. More precisely, in that reality, there has never been a lack. There is always and only fulfillment.
The key to manifestation is to go to the reality where fulfillment already exists even before you see the evidence in the realm of the five senses. This is the technique that makes all visionaries, inventors, and creators successful. The invention is already real to them in their mind or imagination, and they bring it to life. The genius scientist Nikola Tesla recounted that all of the ideas for his world-changing inventions came to him in mystical flashes of insight. He found entrée to the mansion where they already lived, and then fleshed them out in the world. Steven Spielberg said, “Once a month the sky falls on my head, I come to and I see another movie I want to make.” The movie is already a reality. Spielberg’s job as director is to deliver it to the world.
You, too, have access to fabulously creative and successful ideas that can and will change your life and the world. They are already real and in a particular reality, already accomplished. You may not affect the world like Tesla or Spielberg, but you have your own sphere of influence it is your destiny to touch. Mothers, waitresses, and van drivers sometimes bring more blessing and healing to the world in their own quiet ways than moguls who move lots of money and people around, but are devoid of happiness.
This holiday season you can get Santa to deliver. Sure, you can manifest stuff, but why not manifest the most valuable present of all: inner peace. When you are at peace with yourself, you bring healing to everyone you meet. Peace is not something you import from the outside. It is an inner state that you claim. Sort of like writing yourself a love letter from the universe and then discovering the CEO has already signed it.